2. 外语
  3. In the early 1950’s historians who studied pre-industrial Europe (which we may define here as Europe in the period from roughly

In the early 1950’s historians who studied pre-industrial Europe (which we may define here as Europe in the period from roughly

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问题    In the early 1950’s historians who studied pre-industrial Europe (which we may define here as Europe in the period from roughly 1300 to 1800) began, for the first time in large numbers, to investigate more of the pre-industrial European population than the 2 or 3 percent who comprised the political and social elite; the kings, generals, judges, nobles, bishops and local magnates who had hitherto usually filled history books. One difficulty, however, was that few of the remaining 97 percent recorded their thoughts or had them chronicled by contemporaries. Faced with this situation, many historians based their investigations on the only records that seemed to exist: birth, marriage, and death records. As a result, much of the early work on the non-elite was aridly statistical in nature; reducing the vast majority of the population to a set of numbers was hardly more enlightening than ignoring them altogether. Historians still did not know what these people thought or felt.
   One way out of this dilemma was to turn to the records of legal courts for here the voices of the non-elite can most often be heard, as witnesses, plaintiffs, and defendants. These documents have acted as "a point of entry into the mental world of the poor." Historians such as Le Roy Ladurle have used the documents to extract case histories, which have illuminated the attitudes of different social groups (these attitudes include, but are not confined to, attitudes toward crime and the law) and have revealed how the authorities administered justice. It has been societies that have had a developed police system and practiced Roman law, with its written depositions, whose court records have yielded the most data to historians. In Anglo-Saxon countries hardly any of these benefits obtain, but it has still been possible to glean information from the study of legal documents.
   The extraction of case histories is not, however, the only use to which court record may be put. Historians who study pre-industrial Europe have used the records to establish a series of categories of crime and to quantify indictments that were issued over a given number of years. This use of records does yield some information about the non-elite, but this information gives us little insight into the mental lives of the non-elite. We also know that the number of indictments in pre-industrial Europe bears little relation to the number of actual criminal acts, and we strongly suspect that the relationship has varied widely over time. In addition, aggregate population estimates are very shaky, which makes it difficult for historians to compare rates of crime per thousand in one decade of the pre-industrial period with rates in another decade. Given these inadequacies, it is clear why the case history use of court records is to be preferred.
The author mentions Le Roy Ladurie (in Paragraph 2) in order to______
选项 A、give an example of a historian who has made one kind of use of court records
B、cite a historian who has based case histories on the birth, marriage, and death records of the non-elite
C、gain authoritative support for the view that the case history approach is the most fruitful approach to court records
D、point out the first historian to realize the value of court records in illuminating the beliefs and values of the non-elite
答案A
解析 根据文章第二段第三句“Historians such as Le Roy Ladurle have used the documents to extract case histories，which have illuminated the attitudes of different social groups(these attitudes include，but are not confined to，attitudes toward crime and the law)and have revealed how the authorities administeredjustice．”可知，李·罗伊·拉德尔等历史学家曾经运用这些法 律文件来抽取案宗史，阐明了不同社会群体的观点和态度(这些观点包括但不限于犯罪和法 律)，还揭示了当局是如何执法的。所以，作者提及历史学家李·罗伊·拉德尔意在为法庭记 录的使用给出一个例子。据此判断，答案是A。
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